Content Credentials

Content Credentials are machine-readable provenance records attached to digital media. They can record where an image came from, which device captured it and what edits followed. The book calls this a birth certificate for the file, which is useful because squinting for strange fingers and melted lettering is not a serious long-term verification system; as generated material improves, appearance tells us less. A credential does not prove the photograph is honest, kind or correctly interpreted. It proves something narrower and valuable: a traceable history. The hard part is keeping that history attached when platforms strip metadata on upload. Provenance can exist before the plumbing reliably carries it.